The Two Americas

The Two Americas

The Iraq War: A Result of Demolishing President Carter’s Energy Program by his Successor Reagan

By Hermann Scheer

[This article is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.verdi.de/OxOac80f2b_0x0007957e;internal&action=verdi_i…]

Foreign policy experts always contested that oil was involved in the Iraq war. These experts practice the diplomatic game of international politics without recalling its background. In American politics, a discussion on energy policy has continued for thirty years. The world oil crisis of 1973 was its starting point. No country was as shocked by this crisis as the US because no country is nearly as greedy of energy. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the US consumes 25 percent of the annual commercial energy supply.

Cheap Energy as the Condition for the “American Way of Life”

No western industrial state has lower energy taxes and lower energy prices than the US. The notion that energy prices could rise enormously is an obsession of the American society and its political representatives.

Therefore the overwhelming majority of the Senate supported the resistance against the world climate treaty by both president Clinton and Bush. Although irrational, this resistance refers to the future and the present and doesn’t pass by the finiteness of the oil supply. The average energy costs of American firms and private households are just as high as in the European union (EU) or Japan because low energy prices favor increased consumption.

As long as this obsession exists, the negative US attitude toward any substantial energy reform, whether reduced consumption (energy savings, energy efficiency) or substitution of renewable energies for nuclear/fossil sources of energy is directly reflected in its foreign- and security policy in a struggle for unlimited control of cheap worldwide energy resources.

America Accepts Breath-Taking Costs

An elementary drive for self-preservation exists in the American self-suggestion. Americans were and are ready to accept breath-taking political, social and military costs.

The political costs consisted for decades in the frivolous cooperation with medieval feudal regimes like Saudi Arabia or with the Afghan Taliban that mocks all democratic values and in its decision for the Iraq war.

The social costs consist in the acceptance of destruction of the environment.

The military costs consist in the immediate war costs and in the constant occupation in the Gulf region. The US has spent $600 billion in the Gulf region since 1991, $100 per barrel of oil delivered from the Gulf region to the US. This was four- to eight times the cost of a barrel of oil according to the current oil price.

Arguments of petroleum experts that petroleum was not central in the Iraq war since every petroleum-exporting country – irrespective of its political structure – has a compelling economic interest in selling oil – is too narrow and ignores the actual American motivation. Potential crude oil is running out.

The US obviously knows that the cheap oil resources will end in four decades. They know two-thirds of these reserves are in the Gulf region with the largest in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Dependence on petroleum from the Gulf region increases. However they also know the relation between annual oil production and the reserves of individual oil-producing countries.

Iraqi Oil Fields Become Increasingly Important

…The importance of the Iraqi oil fields increases from year to year.

If the future is decided only according to the principle of supply and demand, further development can be easily predicted. Higher prices are inevitable on account of supply shortage compared to the rising worldwide demand in the next decades.

Whoever wants to avoid this malaise must now secure a privileged access to sources of oil. Whoever has this access can still rely on cheap energy imports for a few more years. Whoever doesn’t have this access must accept higher prices. Whoever has access has temporarily crucial world market advantages over others. Thus economic hegemony is won with the military super-power securing access to resources.

The assumption is that the US must blow up the world trade order – which it will do just as unscrupulously as its demolition of international law.

All this is true under the condition that national economies remain dependent on petroleum and do not adopt any strategy of making themselves independent of crude oil by mobilizing renewable energies – especially in the fuel sector for the transportation systems.

Whoever does not pursue this strategy lands with diabolical logic in the American strategy to partake with the US in the oil cake. That is presumably the secret motivation of the British government for involvement in the Iraq war on the side of the US. Two of the seven largest oil corporations are entirely or mainly British, BP and Shell. Since the 1990s, Great Britain has also maintained stand-by forces in the Gulf region with 4000 soldiers at an annual cost of several billion dollars.
Jimmy Carter Represented the Other America

The US has also shown there is another way. This is truly memorable. That other way was taken 23 years ago. Jimmy Carter, president from 1977 to 1981, represented the other line and the other America.

However his predecessor Richard Nixon who started the ambitious research and development program for renewable energies in 1974 already introduced this way. The first plan of the Federal Agency for the Mass Production of Solar Cells was proposed in 1975. The “Council on Environmental Quality”, Carter’s “executive office”, presented the plan in 1978 to cover 23 percent of the all US energy needs with solar energy by the year 2000. An “Energy Independence Act” was passed.

The American Research Program for Renewable Energies far surpassed all other governments. “Solar America” was the slogan. Many grassroots initiatives arose. Under the title “Dispersed, Decentralized and Renewable Energy Sources. Alternatives to National Vulnerability and War”, Carter’s “Energy and Defense” project, recommended the complete changeover of the American energy supply to renewable energies by the year 2050 and refuted the fairy-tale that the costs were too high.

This strategy ended when Reagan replaced Carter. Reagan whose election campaign was financed by US oil corporations systematically demolished the renewable strategy. When his term in office ended in 1989, the US incentive program for renewable energies was shaved to 10 percent of the amount in 1980.

Reagan’s successors Bush senior and Bush junior continued or continue this line. Clinton wasn’t able to change it any more. The oil- and armaments corporations had the greatest influence on American politics and also supplied the government with personnel under Reagan, Bush senior and Bush junior.

Reagan’s Initiative Flowed in Cheney’s Strategy

Reagan’s wanton program flowed directly into the “National Energy Program” presented by vice-president Cheney in the summer of 2001. This program culminated in the recommendation that assuring worldwide energy resources should be central in US foreign and security policy.

NATO’s future task was outlined when its summit conference took place in Rome on November 8/9, 1991 – after the collapse of the Warsaw pact and the Soviet Union – and the “New Strategy of the Alliance” was resolved. Henceforth the “nuclear balance of deterrence” with the Soviet Union and compensation of the Warsaw pact’s alleged superiority in conventional troops were no longer primary in the nuclear weapon strategy but rather combating the “new dangers from the South”, from countries without nuclear weapons that are greatly inferior qualitatively and quantitatively in conventional armed forces.

Military assurance of access to resources and combating terrorism were crucial. Hardly anyone in Europe took that seriously although the first Gulf War had already occurred. Saddam Hussein, the past alliance partner against Iranian fundamentalism, should be prevented from gaining regional supremacy in the Gulf region. After his seizure of Kuwait, he controlled the largest oil reserves.

There was a central reason why this Gulf war was broken off and not intensified to Saddam Hussein’s overthrow. As a power cut down to size, Hussein could be used since a threatened collapse of Iraq would strengthen the politically more stubborn and more fundamentalist oil-producing country Iran through the voluntary annexation of the Shiite settlements of Iraq and all the oil harbors of contemporary Iraq.

The US in its energy policy – and in its environmental, foreign and securities policies – has never recovered from the fundamental political change from Carter to Reagan. The European states followed like lemmings because they didn’t counter their own energy corporations by adopting a strategy of energy independence with renewable energies. Therefore they all supported the NATO resolutions on assuring access to resources since 1981 – without realizing the drastic consequences.

Clinton Didn’t Continue Carter’s Policy

The Clinton/Gore term in office between 1993 and 2001 failed to continue Carter’s strategy. The White Paper of the European Union (EU) commission on energy supply security of 2002 (!) did not thematicize the political connections. The commission following the insinuations of its own energy corporations gambled away the future to secure its short-term interests.

The voting out of office of the “other America” represented by Carter has thrown the US and the world back a quarter of a century although the world finds itself in a race with time, marked by the ecological world crisis and the approaching global fossil-nuclear energy supply crisis. This was a world-political disaster that has cast ever-longer shadows up to the current war and further resource wars.

Out of consideration of the short-term and shortsighted interests of energy corporations, the world ecological and economic suicide and gradual genocide are risked. That is the absurdity of the American strategy. There is still the repressed opposition of European conscientious objectors – who are reproached for deficient loyalty by the Bush administration because they consume oil without wanting to secure the oil…

We rejoice that the “Tears of the Devil” are Drying Up

Let us finally free ourselves from this energy dependency with a comprehensive strategy! Instead of secretly profiting from the US taking world oil resources under its political control, we should openly note (and be glad for ecological reasons) that the sources of crude oil – the “tears of the devil” (Rockefeller) – are drying up because their continued burning would have immeasurable consequences.

Let us mobilize the renewable energies through a “grand strategy” far beyond the patchwork that was more or less successful in the past!

The NO to the Iraq war is only one side of the political coin. The other side is the comprehensive YES to energy alternatives. When we adopt this way that was abandoned in 1980 in Washington, this will lead to the renaissance of the other America.